Five years ago this month, the “Arab Spring” got underway with the non-violent overthrow of Tunisia’s long-ruling dictator, Zine el-Abidine Ben Ali. He dared not order the army to open fire on the demonstrators (because it might not obey), he was running out of money, and eventually he flew off off to Saudi Arabia to …
Peak oil is so last year. Now we can worry about peak everything: peak food, peak soil, peak fertiliser, even peak bees. Let’s start small. We depend on bees to pollinate plants that account for about one-third of the world’s food supply, but since 2006 bee colonies in the United States have been dying off …
Last Sunday was a busy day: three elections, in three different continents, all of them offering at least the hope of better times. First, Brazil, where President Dilma Rousseff eked out a second-round victory with 51.6 percent of the votes versus 48.4 percent for the challenger, Aecio Neves. But Neves was quick to acknowledge her …
To the vast surprise of absolutely nobody, Field Marshal Abdel Fatah al-Sisi won the Egyptian presidential election last week. Moreover, he won it with a majority that would pass for a resounding triumph in most countries. But it is a disarmingly modest majority for an Arab Man of Destiny. Not for Sisi the implausible margins …
27 January 2014 The Arab Spring Three Years On By Gwynne Dyer It has taken a little longer than it did after the 1848 revolutions in Europe, but on the third anniversary of the Egyptian revolution we can definitely say that the “Arab Spring” is finished. The popular, mostly non-violent revolutions that tried to overthrow …
11 January 2014 Egypt Referendum By Gwynne Dyer General Abdel Fattah al-Sisi, who led the coup against Egypt’s elected president last July, has one of the finest collections of military headgear in the entire Middle East. Perhaps that’s why he has still not admitted that he plans to become the next president: he can’t decide …
18 August 2013 Egypt: The Futility of Foreign Intervention By Gwynne Dyer It’s a silly question, obviously, but it still has to be asked. What, if anything, should the rest of the world do about the tragedy in Egypt? The same question has been hanging in the air about the even greater Syrian tragedy for …
28 July 2013 Egypt: Worse Than a Crime By Gwynne Dyer Two massacres committed by the Egyptian army in one week. At least 130 people killed in the streets of Cairo for protesting against the military coup. It is worse than a crime (as the French diplomat Talleyrand remarked when Napoleon ordered a particularly counter-productive …
7 July 2013 End of the Arab Spring? By Gwynne Dyer If the people in charge of the various opposition parties in Egypt had any strategic vision, they would not have launched the mass protests that caused the army to oust President Mohammed Morsi on 4 July. They would have bided their time and waited …
3 July 2013 Egypt and Turkey: Democracy in Trouble By Gwynne Dyer Egypt and Turkey have the same basic political problem. Democracy can work despite huge ideological differences, but only if everybody is willing to be very tolerant of other people’s ideas and values. Three weeks ago the streets of Turkish cities were full of …